What's Wrong with the World Comments
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net//recent_comments.php
All comments for What's Wrong with the World
en-us
2018
lydia.mcgrew
Mon, 17 Dec 2018 19:13:51
-0500
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss60
(21:14) Lydia on Tidings of comfort and...wellll...hmmmm
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/12/tidings_of_comfort_andwellll.html#comment-445232
I believe that the word "core," like the word "gist," functions as a kind of signaling device. It signals to the reader and hearer and even perhaps self-signals to the theorist (!!) that "this is all no big deal." Other than that, as presently used in many NT circles, such words are coming to have very little semantic content.
(18:29) Tony on Tidings of comfort and...wellll...hmmmm
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/12/tidings_of_comfort_andwellll.html#comment-445230
If making something up was part of a "genre," or if it was "accepted at the time," then any alteration of fact doesn't count as an error and hence cannot count against reliability.
Actually, if making something up was part of a genre, and if it was accepted at the time, all this would do is constitute a direct basis for saying that the genre was unreliable. Individual instances of an unreliable genre are also unreliable.
Hence, what Licona does here gets wrongly considered to be a "defense" of the "core" of the infancy narratives because he argued (wrongly) that the "core" is saved by multiple attestation.
Here Licona's completely arbitrary, completely unfounded thesis of what counts as "core" comes into its own as an epistemic hurdle: what if LUKE, in making up the story about the angel Gabriel, and the story about the visit to Elizabeth, meant to recount really and truly as historically accurate the Marian prayer, the Magnificat. Because it wasn't attested by Matt, though, Licona claims it isn't "core" and we can ditch it as "non-core". So Licona's view of what was core and Luke's view might have no bearing on each other at all. Licona is importing from his own POV a "test" for what is core that is completely foreign to the Gospel of Luke as a work. If you were to work solely within Luke and not by reference to what is in Matthew, you would arrive at a totally different picture of what seems to be core to it, i.e. essential to what the writer meant to convey. Licona is introducing anachronism into the historical analysis. Which is quite unprofessional.
Tony M
(15:47) Lydia on Tidings of comfort and...wellll...hmmmm
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/12/tidings_of_comfort_andwellll.html#comment-445229
N.S., it has saddened me for quite some time, but there are quite a number of followers of Dr. Licona who believe that in some strange way this is *defending* the Gospels. In May when he did a series of interviews with Tim Stratton on the Freethinking Podcast, they were both agreeing with each other that teaching people that there were "devices" that allowed the Gospel authors to alter facts is somehow "defending the reliability of the Gospels." Now, interestingly, that was kicked off by agreeing that you can get a good argument for the resurrection *without* defending the reliability of the Gospels. They agreed that you don't "need" the Gospels to defend the resurrection, because you can "do it all with Paul." (If I had attributed that view to Licona, in such frank terms, his followers would have arisen in wrath and accused me of a straw man.) But then, they agreed, Licona went on to "defend" the reliability of the Gospels *anyway* (as a kind of extra??) by his work on literary devices.
Given the alleged nature of the literary devices in question, this should be extremely baffling to everyone, just as it is to you.
The idea that this is a "defense" arises from several mistaken beliefs/assumptions:
1) If making something up was part of a "genre," or if it was "accepted at the time," then any alteration of fact doesn't count as an error and hence cannot count against reliability. Hence, it is believed, if a scholar argues that a certain activity was part of a genre and accepted at the time, he has "defended" the Gospels from the charge of error or unreliability.
This is obviously false, since human beings create artistic genres that are not even *claimed* to be historically reliable. And it can be accepted at a given time to produce things in such a genre. E.g. Movies that are only loosely based upon historical events.
2) If a scholar identifies this change as part of a genre that was allowed at the time, the scholar has a really good handle on precisely "how far" someone creating in that genre would go and how far he wouldn't go, and therefore identifying such a change as part of a genre allows us simultaneously to put limits on invention and to protect certain parts of the narrative from the charge that they are invented.
That this is false can be seen simply by observing what the scholars actually do and the way that they continually "make it up as they go along." What counts as the "core" or the "gist" shifts with the winds and is not objectively definable at all. The very fact that the "core" gets defined as what *happens to be the overlap* between two accounts lets us see that this is false as well. If we didn't happen to have a second account that reaffirmed some particular propositional item, that item would, by that accident of history, not get counted as the "core" of either account.
3) Multiple attestation is a trump card that can be pulled out in virtually any circumstance where one sees that more than one document asserts or implies a fact. Considerations of independence concern *only* the possibility that one document was copied from another. So if there are just a lot of differences, even if our theory attributes them to sheer fabrication, we can still claim "multiple attestation."
I have addressed this error briefly in the o.p. and at more length in the forthcoming article. I recently saw a prominent scholar state that the apocryphal Gospel of Peter (!!) appears to have an "independent" account of the story of the guard at the tomb. What were the grounds of this suggestion? Merely that the Gospel of Peter has few verbal similarities to the Gospel of Matthew. That presumably means that the Gospel of Peter's account wasn't *textually copied* from the Gospel of Matthew, but it *hardly* means that the account is "independent" in the sense that the author of the Gospel of Peter literally had some line of information that went back to some person in the know about the *real events* who was *different* from the source of information used by Matthew. Indeed, it seems *highly* likely that the inclusion of the story of the guard at the tomb in the Gospel of Peter *was* just influenced by the fact that the author had read or heard the Gospel of Matthew, full stop. Verbal dissimilarity and the word "independent" are not all you need to claim multiple attestation!
The extremely undisciplined use of the concept of multiple attestation really, really allows people to think that they can give away the store a lot more than they can (as Licona does in this speculation about the infancy narratives) and count on multiple attestation as a kind of safety net.
Hence, what Licona does here gets wrongly considered to be a "defense" of the "core" of the infancy narratives because he argued (wrongly) that the "core" is saved by multiple attestation.
4) (Remember, these are falsehoods that cause these things to be thought of as a defense of the Gospels.) Our case is stronger if we lower the number of propositions we are defending.
This mistake arises from a very strange and vague epistemic idea that there is a certain fixed amount of strength in the case for Christianity and that we somehow "concentrate" that strength and make it greater as we lower the sheer amount of propositional content we are defending. It is almost never stated outright, but it hangs around in the background: The idea is that if we defend, say, the Wise Men and shepherds *in addition to* the Virgin Birth, we are "spreading around" the amount of epistemic force that we have to spend, whereas if we stop trying to defend the Wise Men and the shepherds, we'll have a stronger case (through this concentration effect) for the Virgin Birth!
Well, this comment is long enough, so as the saying goes, I'll leave working out what's wrong with that idea as an exercise for the reader.
(13:51) Nobody special on Tidings of comfort and...wellll...hmmmm
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/12/tidings_of_comfort_andwellll.html#comment-445228
*whose existence is an obvious threat to the reliability of the authores who claim...
(13:39) Nobody special on Tidings of comfort and...wellll...hmmmm
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/12/tidings_of_comfort_andwellll.html#comment-445227
"Moreover, it is the *sort* of wild conjecture that one rightly does not expect to see in a person who is supposedly *defending* the reliability of the Gospels in a debate with a skeptic."
This is what puzzles me... Why would somebody think that a sceptic, however open-minded he might be towards Christianity, would ever,ever, ever, be satisfied with such an approach that Licona wholeheartedly advocates for? At the end of the day, when we understand all the ancient textual magic that Licona supposedly discovered and now shares with the world, we end up with a "core of truth" with a suspicious veracity, and many made up stories whose existence is an obvious threat to the authority of those who claim the veracity of this "core". And the sceptic should just pretend that all of this is ok because the ancients liked to make up a whole set of stories that they claimed to be true, in order to prove a point, a "core", that they thought of as being true? And the sceptic should simply ignore that Licona's approach leads him with a mostly made up Gospel whose authores claim to be true? Why would an open-minded sceptic buy this? Why would Ehrman (who is anything but open-minded towards the actual truth of the Gospel) buy this? Why would for God's sake anyone buy this?
Well, I am a bit sad for Licona. On midnight mass I am going to celebrate an awesome Christmass story, whereas Licona is going to celebrate, emm, midrash?.... well... happy midrash (?), I guess...
(12:02) Lydia on Tidings of comfort and...wellll...hmmmm
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/12/tidings_of_comfort_andwellll.html#comment-445226
(I think I'll use Tony 1.)
Tony 1:
I am criticizing Licona because his "speculation" is a) crazy and hyper-complex, b) unnecessary, c) the only "solution" he suggests, rather than even considering normal harmonization, and d) utterly at odds with what else we know about the Gospel authors. Plus his methodological statement about multiple attestation and reliability is *flat wrong*, as I can show probabilistically.
I am not saying, "Never conjecture about how we might have gotten the Gospel documents that we have."
What I have written is actually quite clear. Some conjectures are more grounded in reality than others. Not all speculations are created equal. Conjecturing that Luke and Matthew made most of their stories up has a burden of proof that Licona has made not the slightest attempt to satisfy. Harmonization is a normal and responsible historical practice. Taking mere differences (not even contradictions) and just saying, of authors for which we have *reason to believe they were attempting to write historically*, "Hey, maybe they just made all of this stuff up" is not *reasonable* conjecture. It's wild conjecture.
Moreover, it is the *sort* of wild conjecture that one rightly does not expect to see in a person who is supposedly *defending* the reliability of the Gospels in a debate with a skeptic. If you really think that that is what Matthew and Luke were like, you should realize that you don't really think of them as reliable authors.
(12:02) Scott W. on Tidings of comfort and...wellll...hmmmm
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/12/tidings_of_comfort_andwellll.html#comment-445225
"Midrash" seems to be the new "turtles all the way down".
(11:41) Tony on Tidings of comfort and...wellll...hmmmm
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/12/tidings_of_comfort_andwellll.html#comment-445224
For the sake of clarity, the "Tony" who posted above at 9:24 am on Dec. 18 is not the Tony M who is a contributor here at this blog. He is a different Tony altogether.
Tony M
(10:05) Willem Jan Blom on Tidings of comfort and...wellll...hmmmm
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/12/tidings_of_comfort_andwellll.html#comment-445223
If someone points to the census story in Luke as an argument against the credibility of the Gospels, I will give this reply:
1. First, whether the nativity stories are reliable or not doesn't impact the overall reliability of the Gospels very much. Suppose, the Gospels were written around 70 AD. The events during the ministry of Jesus occurred about 40 years earlier. The events in the nativity stories happened about 70-80 years earlier. Luke could very well have had bad sources for the nativity events and very good sources for the events during Jesus' ministry. You can compare this with many credible ancient Roman historians (e.g., Velleius Paterculus, Plutarch, etc.), who report legendary stories at the beginning of their books but are very reliable as the events happened closer to their own times.
2. However, it's not at all probable that the census story in Luke is a historical error. It's possible to explain the census story in a way that's plausible, although I wouldn't say that it's probable. However, that's not needed, since the burden of proof is on the person who wants to show that Luke made an error.
Luke 2:1-2 can be read just like Acts 11:27-28:
"Now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. And one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world (this took place in the days of Claudius)."
It's striking how many similarities there are between Luke 2:1-2 and Acts 11:27-28. Both start with 'in these/those days'. Both refer to an emperor. In both cases, the ambiguous word οἰκουμένη is used. In both cases, there are two time indications with ἐγένετο in the second time indication. In Acts, the second time indication does not refer to these same event, but to an event further in time, i.e., the fulfillment of the prophecy. Therefore, it's plausible to suggest that the second time indication in Luke 2 ("when Quirinius was governor of Syria") also points to an event later in time and is not an addition to the first one ("in those days").
The argument against the reliability of the Gospels based on the census story is based on two false presuppositions:
1. An argument against inerrancy is an argument against reliability.
2. Josephus and the Gentile historians report all major events in the history of the Roman world.
(09:24) Tony on Tidings of comfort and...wellll...hmmmm
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/12/tidings_of_comfort_andwellll.html#comment-445222
Lydia,
Your explanation of the ‘differences’ in Luke and Matthew are good and seem quite plausible. BUT you must readily admit you do t know. You can not know what Luke ‘knew’ or ‘heard’ or Matthew. It is speculation on your part, to explain (in a reasonable way) the problem. The issue is you have taken Mike to task for his speculation as to HOW one could explain it, which he readily admits he does not know. You are arguing about one person’s imagination by using yours...we can speculate all day but Mike is humble enough to admit he doesn’t know...I wish you would do so also.
(02:08) DR84 on Evangelical college associations capitulate in return for exemptions
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/12/evangelical_college_associatio.html#comment-445221
What if LGBTQXYZ beliefs and related conduct were just understood to be essentially religious and protected accordingly? I don't mean as an explicit category, but just one religion among many that are not named in anti discrimination law.
I am sure this is a non-starter, but I haven't thought of a clear reason this solution would cause all the problems that sexual orientation and gender identity being added as new categories do.
The one case I can think of I suspect this solution would lead to a wrong outcome is the case of the funeral director who decided he wanted to masquerade as a woman at work. This troubles me. On the upside, it seems the trend is to delink religious belief and religious conduct, particularly among progressives. This approach could force them to reevaluate that.
PS I am assuming this is likely a bad idea but I don't yet understand exactly how if we assume current anti discrimination law is not going anywhere and we just have to make do.
(22:16) Sean Killackey on Evangelical college associations capitulate in return for exemptions
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/12/evangelical_college_associatio.html#comment-445220
Unfortunate. The school I attend, Northwest Nazarene University, is part of the CCCU. I don't know how much influence they have within the CCCU, or how they voted.
(20:55) Tony on Evangelical college associations capitulate in return for exemptions
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/12/evangelical_college_associatio.html#comment-445219
Right now, the reasoning goes, help from Evangelical organizations would be useful to "the LGBT community", and they might even be willing to consider an "exchange of protections", but at the rate the LGBT side is making converts and changing laws "that is not likely to last". ...So even if Houghton is right, the gays know they will ultimately get their way regardless and have no reason to reciprocate any concessions the evangelicals make.
Mullen's a silly argument in just about every way you look at it. If Mullen sees that gays already have 60%, and that the percentage is only going higher, then the gays are not only assured of getting their objective, but of getting it soon, too, with or without evangelical help. In fact, at least a quarter (but probably much more) of the gays would RATHER get it over the dead bodies (metaphorically) of the evangelicals anyway, just to prove that they didn't need the help - not anymore. The time they might have wanted help was 30+ years ago. Now it's just sucking up to the leaders, and they will reward such unwelcome sucking up in traditional fashion: by throwing the evangelical brown-nosers under the bus at the first opportune moment.
Even if Mullen were to achieve some kind of quid-pro-quo, it most likely wouldn't last more than 3 years, 5 at the outside. This is a devil's bargain, alright: you lose your principles AND you lose your fight, you get run over in the process, and all you have to show for it is that the fence-sitters become convinced you never had a principle to begin with. He's leading with a lose-lose strategy: he will lose in the long term AND in the short term.
I don't know what the answer is for right now, but it isn't in the CCCU and NAE approach, that's only likely to actually accelerate their demise. We (the community that believes in sexual reality) ought to be trying all sorts of potentially viable solutions, to see what works. Some on offense, some on defense, and some mixed. The reality is that the arguments of the KGB-NKVD-LQXBMHJGWD crowd are crap, and shining a light on them in many different angles won't hurt. But arguments are only a small portion of the story, we need "human interest" stuff that also drives the point home: stories of gays raising kids that turn out horribly, stories of gays who are unhappy until they stop their self-destructive behavior and find a level of peace by being chaste. Etc. Stories (like the Miller case in VT) that are patently a matter of those in charge of the gay agenda torturing ordinary folk just for being ordinary - so much for "human rights". Conscience is a human right, too, you know.
But we needn't try the options that take counsel of defeat and submission. Saruman and Wormtongue need not apply.
(20:14) Lydia on Evangelical college associations capitulate in return for exemptions
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/12/evangelical_college_associatio.html#comment-445218
Talk about a deal with the devil. And a deal that involves agreeing with the devil's wicked falsehoods to start out with. No thanks.
(17:05) Bonald on Evangelical college associations capitulate in return for exemptions
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/12/evangelical_college_associatio.html#comment-445217
Supporters have an interesting reasoning. From the article:
'“The fact that these basic human rights for the LGBT community are already secured for nearly 60 percent of the country at either the state or local level suggests that the window for this exchange of protections at the national level is narrow,” wrote Houghton president Mullen. “There is an opportunity in this moment that is not likely to last.”'
Setting aside whether the ability to compel people to publicly accept one's lifestyle is a "basic human right", the argument seems to be that right now, 60 percent of the country is already on board with this, and that number is only going to go up. Right now, the reasoning goes, help from Evangelical organizations would be useful to "the LGBT community", and they might even be willing to consider an "exchange of protections", but at the rate the LGBT side is making converts and changing laws "that is not likely to last". The latter point may be true, but if the Evangelical colleges know it, then the gays surely also know it. So even if Houghton is right, the gays know they will ultimately get their way regardless and have no reason to reciprocate any concessions the evangelicals make.
(08:56) Beth Impson on Evangelical college associations capitulate in return for exemptions
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/12/evangelical_college_associatio.html#comment-445216
I think they decided such schools would have some kind of "second-class" membership ("associates" maybe?), but thankfully our administration and board saw that for what it is -- the first step down the slope.
(09:10) Lydia on Evangelical college associations capitulate in return for exemptions
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/12/evangelical_college_associatio.html#comment-445214
That's very interesting about CCCU, Beth. If they were admitting colleges that no longer take such a stand, then it is unsurprising that the perspective of the board itself would have changed. The board is going to reflect, over time, the positions of the member schools.
(15:41) Mark on Transgender Blasphemy at the ETS
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/11/transgender_blasphemy_at_the_e.html#comment-445213
Likewise, the West can only pretend that boys are girls only a few times. The last time will end the society as we know it.
You know who isn't bothered about the arcane question of whether because a boy feels he is a girl he must be a girl or treated like one: China.
China, materialistic, atheistic China has more faith in what is real than we do in the West and that is one reason why they will pull ahead of us - there is no drag on their science by a bunch of humanities experts who are determined to be dilettante scientists, who would flunk the first question in a basic chemistry class: is matter real or a mere mental fiction? Biological matter is real. One can wish it were otherwise, but this is not like the end of the movie, The Man who Shot Liberty Valence:
Substituting fantasy for reality is always an attraction for humanity everywhere, but it has it's limits for all people and places, and for that very reason the truth that transgender operations promote not betterment but depression and death has been an undiscussed open secret that is now breaking through as a fact. As if that wasn't already known intuitively by anyone with a shred of sense. I'm not saying the phenomenon will end, but the idea that it's a good option for the confused is a delusion fit for only the dogmatic.
The Chinese have every bit as much of a tendency to substitute fantasy for reality as we do, and a good bit more. But the grass in greener there through the telescope. Optimism is realism, but pessimism sounds smarter. Just look at the history of the entire region. It's ghastly. My interests lead me to German history a good bit. For all the simplistic explanatory ideas about the rise of the Nazis, most people don't realize how anti-Western Germany had declared itself to be and how toxic a storm of bad ideas it was, and that in a place only recently unified and with little to guide it. Perhaps it would have been a greater wonder if they'd not caused a world-wide meltdown. I'm not sure China is really much better off so large are it's social problems their leaders are hoping to mask by way of militarism.
As bad as things may seem to some, and as deep as our challenges are, it's a fallen world and other nations have their own problems many can't or don't want to see. China's dominance isn't a given in any sense. There's no reason to project a linear course for them (inclining) or us (declining). A societies' political structure is fundamental, so political systems matter, but not to those in thrall to postmodernism, which is at bottom anti-Westernism. Those who've fallen into this shouldn't be lecturing others on the inevitability of Western decline, not the least because it's never clear whether they're gleeful or sad about this supposed fact.
As usual, Victor Davis Hanson provides the context for all this, and puts his finger on why people assume China's domination is in the bag.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/americans-frustrated-with-international-disequilibrium-trade-immigration/
The one that pertains to this crowd would no doubt be a flavor of this one: "that China can weld government-run market capitalism to autocratic government to improve on supposedly chaotic Western democratic and republican government and indulgent human rights."
(10:42) Beth Impson on Phillip Zodhiates begins prison term
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/12/philip_zodhiates_begins_prison.html#comment-445212
Lydia, thanks for posting this and keeping us up on this situation. May the Lord give continued strength and courage to all involved.
(10:41) Beth Impson on Evangelical college associations capitulate in return for exemptions
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/12/evangelical_college_associatio.html#comment-445211
When the issue came up of the CCCU's allowing schools that no longer stand against homosexuality into membership, there were many, many discussions among the college presidents with the CCCU leadership. I am proud to say that our college considered membership benefits to be less important than truth and withdrew from the organization over it. This new stand is thus not surprising from CCCU, as it is clearly only concerned with the protection of its members and not with principles.